Another view of Egypt’s violence

While much of Egypt and the world fixates on the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood and their attacks on Coptic churches, Timothy Kaldas sees something else: “The state’s cynical use of Christian suffering to justify its violent behavior.”

Despite the fact that attacks on Christian churches and communities have been widespread and well-documented since Aug. 14, “the security forces, be they police or military, have been nowhere to be seen. This is not due to them being unaware of the attacks,” writes Kaldas on the English-language Mada Masr news website. The American-born son of Egyptian expatriates, Kaldas is a Cairo-based photographer.

“Every press conference that addresses the foreign media never fails to inform foreign journalists they’re not paying enough attention to the crimes being perpetrated against Christians throughout the country,” he writes. “[T]he negligence of the media, if you believe such negligence exists, pales in comparison to the negligence of the state, whose only interest in mentioning attacks on Christians is to further their political agenda.”